To finish off the final detail work I needed to “soot” up my engines – easy, Games Workshop’s Stormraven guide tells you to apply 3 coats of Badab Black (one after the other when dry) and stipple in some Chaos Black.

Next, it was time for assembly.

As I’m using the kit from Chapterhouse Studios (CS), I had to use their guide to build the modified hull. The initial assembly is identical, but when you would fit the rear plate and hatch, you switch to the instructions from CS.

As you can see from the underside shot (I’ve not added Chapterhouse’s baseplate yet) the hull extension adds a good length to the aircraft. After this slight detour, it’s back to the main instructions to add the wings, landing gear and tail sections. To fit the engines you need to cut off the plastic extensions – you can do this with a pair of clippers, but a model saw is better. After those went on, I put the cockpit together – the complete details and pilot now come into their own.

The hatch you can see in the above picture is also from the Chapterhouse kit, and allows you to hide the hole for the gunner’s pod.

To finish this off, we need to add the cockpit canopy, the weapons pod and icons.

Quite often the better half and I joke about how it looks like a Thunderhawk Gunship was towed and put through a cube crusher before a Techpriest took pity on it. This really put me off until I found out about the conversion kit done by Chapterhouse Studios, whilst I don’t endorse how much Chapterhouse infringes on GW’s rights or feel the need to tell you buy their products, I am impressed by their conversion kit which lengthens out the hull of the Stormraven to make it look like it can carry what the fluff tells you it can.

Anyway, I digress – I decided to follow as much of GW’s paint guide as possible.

So I started with an undercoat of skull white on the exterior surfaces and skull black on the metallics and interiors. After that dried, I pulled out the handy airbrush and applies a base coat of Mechrite Red to all of the exterior surfaces and the crew. Interior surfaces, engines and landing gear all got a 50:50 mix of Chaos Black and Boltgun Silver applied.

Blood Angel Vehicles

So I recently discovered how to pull this effect off when I flicked through a copy of the Games Workshop’s ‘How to Paint Citadel Tanks’. In the book they show some pics of Nid Bio-Acid damage done to some Imperial tanks and described the process.

Drop Pod Bio-acid damage exterior

I decided to apply this to the Death Company Drop Pod I’m working on. I placed the acid damage high up on the pod petal purely for aesthetic reasons (alternatively you can picture a Gargoyle high up, getting a passing shot at the pod as it hurtles past!). I also decided to have the acid eat through to the interior a bit….

Drop Pod Bio-acid damage interior

The method for it is pretty easy, I drilled some holes into the area I wanted affected by the acid, gave it a brush with a 50:50 mix of chaos black and boltgun silver then used warlock purple over the area that the acid hit. When that dried I highlighted some of the holes with tentacle pink. Finally I coated the area (well, splattered) with water effects paste. After 24 hours that was the effect.